From 2015 through 2020, supporting the Student Life and Culture Archives’ celebrations of the University’s sesquicentennial, University Archives graduate student employee Salvatore De Sando wrote narrative, archival bibliographies about the student life experiences of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds. These bibliographies of archives holdings are designed to help researchers begin their own research into student life and culture histories starting at the University of Illinois and traveling across the world.
Each bibliography has three sections: one about early administrative, faculty, and staff connections with different cultures; one about early alumni who worked locally or abroad with different cultures; and one about early students who might have identified or been connected with different cultures of the world. This series used primary resources available in the University Archives and University Library. Most blog posts include documented examples of early University of Illinois administrative or faculty work in different nations, internal and external expert guest lecturers, followed by early University alumni, then immigrant, refugee, and international student examples, and student cultural organization origins or activities. On top of all of that, a few special blog posts examine how different student cultural populations facilitated multicultural or international education projects and programs.